Ship of the Valkryies (Part Ten)
A Star Trek crossover fanfic by Lt Taya 17 Janeway (TaTTooGaL™)
A two-dimensional game looked deceptively easy, though Keiko several hours later as she plowed through the computer-generated landscape. It was galling, to say in the least. She was being trumped by a three year old kid- none other than Naomi Wildman. She wondered briefly if it was because younger children responded more aggressively to the stimulus of snatching things from others. Certainly they were very possessive.
The game had been downloaded into Voyager's primary systems and had been set up in Astrometrics, which possessed a suitably large viewscreen as well as multiple consoles for different players. The viewscreen had been split into four sections, each for every player. The game was controlled by a few buttons: one moved the player left, then another moved her right, then there were those for forward, backwards, jumping up, crouching down, climbing, and of course, firing. The controls took some getting used to, and Keiko was still extremely clumsy with them, while people like Naomi were navigating with ease, and would probably still be able to beat Keiko with one hand tied behind her back. There she went again- ramming into another wall. Damn.
The game of Counterstrike, adapted to suit twenty-fourth century environs, followed a simple basic principle: grab as many objects onscreen as possible while blasting your enemies into oblivion at the same time. The environment they were playing in was nothing more comforting than a dark, green-hued Borg cube. Armed with nothing but an imaginary phaser rifle and lots of gut, Keiko fought and threaded her way through the dark oppressive corridors, shooting with wild abandon at anything that moved and grabbing anything that didn't. There were no rules, no strategies, and no obstacles to be taken into consideration. Just plain, pure mindless violence. How hard could it get?
Crusher's Bajoran persona stepped into view, and on instinct Keiko went into fry mode, attacking the good doctor with wild abandon. In the fierce firefight between them that ensued, Keiko somehow or the other won, leaving Crusher a smoking pile of flesh on the floor. Keiko refused to take unseemly pleasure in the downfall of her comrade, but the feeling which swept through her, not quite euphoria and not quite adrenaline rush, was intoxicating. It was a good way to release tension, she figured, and she envisioned Miles and herself spending hours on the holodeck with a holoprogram like this to shoot Quark up every time the supercilious Ferengi got on their nerves. It would be fun… just as long as no-one else found out.
Keiko navigated a sharp bend in a corridor and rammed headfirst into another wall.
Well. Some things would have to be worked out first.
Naomi's Klingon character came into view.
Not again, groaned Keiko. Other than being way better than Keiko at aiming and firing, Naomi seemed to have quicker reflexes and besides, Keiko was reluctant to shoot at a child, no matter that the child was posing as a fully-armed Klingon warrior and had the distinct advantage over her. It went against her basic principles to bully a child.
Naomi, however, had no such qualms about bullying her. Bam bam bam bam. In a few seconds it was all over, and she'd been killed by a precocious three year old… again. Damned embarrassing.
Fortunately she wasn't the last in points this game. That dubious honor belonged to -hah!- Seven of Nine. So much for Borg efficiency… and this was supposed to be her home turf, for goodness sakes! Janeway, standing by the side, observing them, seemed to be highly amused by the results of the game, more so because of Seven's frustration at her inability to navigate through a two-dimensional landscape with ease.
They'd been at this game for hours, thought Keiko, rubbing her aching eyes in a brief reprieve. Where the heck was Quinlan? She should have shown up by now. She shot an anxious glance at Cass, silently asking, When is this going to end? After a day of callous bloodshed, I'm ready to fall asleep at my console. Where's the girl?
Cass made a deferential movement, as if to say, Patience, my friend. A pretty hard thing to do with an adrenaline supercharge running through one's body and a huge phaser rifle- imaginary, but still a phaser rifle- in one hand. Then Cass gestured to the viewscreen, and said, "Behind you."
Keiko whirled just in time to see Seven blast her into another smoking pile of organic matter. Damn.
Then Quinlan appeared on the scene, pouting slightly. "Nobody invited me to play," sulked the dark-haired omnipotent child as she strode across Astrometrics.
"That's because we couldn't find you," said Crusher mildly as the child approached her with interest. "Want to take my place?"
Quinlan fell for it, hook, line and sinker. "Okay." She took the controls from Crusher, who gratefully retired from the scene. Quinlan, for all her relative youth, was a diabolical player, and it wasn't long before the rest of them were all wallowing in the dust behind her. Quinlan quickly became totally absorbed in the game, her face rapturous.
Then a hand clapped down on her shoulder. "Where have you been all this while?" Q demanded, annoyed.
Quinlan looked up from her game, alarmed. "Daddy?"
Q swung the little girl up onto his hip and frowned down at her. "Didn't Daddy ever tell you not to wander off by yourself? What if bad men had hurt you when Daddy wasn't looking?"
"At this point, bad men is a relative term," muttered Crusher dryly.
Q ignored her and continued his lecture of his little daughter, who gave him the most guileless I'm-a-good-little-girl look she could manage. "Do you know how worried we got?"
"Worried about the child, or worried about being unmercifully slaughtered by your wife?" asked Janeway quietly.
"Keep out of this, Madame Captain, or I'll remove your locution skills which I so kindly restored to you," he said warningly. Then he turned back to the child. "Well. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Quinlan smiled up at him. "But I was on Voyager all the time, Daddy. Safe here."
"Safe?" Q clutched his chest in mock horror. "In the care of these… mortals?"
"One of whom, if you'd recall, is your self appointed son's godmother," murmured Janeway.
Quinlan grinned. "See?"
Q shot Janeway a dirty look. "When it finally gets through to your thick head to settle down and spawn with that primal Tattoo Boy you have there… I'm going to be there every step of the way and spoil every lecture you give to your children by inserting stupid typical mortal remarks such as those you just said, and see how you like it!"
Remembering their recent dinner conversation, Crusher unsuccessfully tried stifling her giggles with her wrist, and Keiko mirrored her amusement. Naomi nudged Seven with a mischievous grin.
The glare Janeway gave Q at that moment would have melted the bulkhead had Q not been there.
"Well," said Q hastily, getting the feeling that he might have swapped one axe-murderer on his tail for another, bundled Quinlan into his arms and made as if to leave. "Since you've completed this Quest, you'll find the locations and specifications for the next Quest stored in your ship's database."
"And what about our reward for this Quest?" asked Crusher.
"Why, you get my undying gratitude, of course," said Q with an annoying grin. "What more could a mere mortal like you ask for?" Then he was gone in a flash of light.
Crusher stared at the empty spot where he once was with a scowl. "You should have killed him while you had the chance to," she told Janeway in irritation.
******
Their next destination was the planet Thymus in a sector mere light years away from where they were supposed to be participating in some grand obstacle course. While Deanna plotted a course towards the planet, Kira tried peering over Cass' shoulder to see the instructions for the Quest. "Who's being sent down for this one?" she asked, keeping her fingers tightly crossed.
"Captain and first mate," said Cass breezily.
"Damn," swore Kira.
******
The planet Thymus defied all descriptions astronomers could choose to give it. Surface conditions, core/crust composition and standard orbit all classified the planetoid as M-class, but the impression given by the tumultuousness of its red skies was that one would have an easier time weathering Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
Janeway and Kira beamed down alone to the set coordinates on the planet's surface. It looked just as bleak on the surface as it had looked in orbit. The skies were dark red, overcast, and a dull reddish-gray-yellow light, the kind that permeates the sky just before a mid-afternoon downpour, lighted the world. The horizon curved into infinity in the distance, a flat featureless plain of dull reds and browns, parched and dried. No vegetation whatsoever. The air was hot and oppressive. If anything, the planet resembled a cross between Vulcan, Qo'NoS, and Mars.
"Welcome to the infamous Ras Klot obstacle course," said a simpering, sniveling voice from beside them. Janeway and Kira turned to look at the owner of the voice and were rewarded with the sight of a small, slightly hunched old man with wrinkly dusk-colored skin, disheveled wispy white hair and generally oily manner. He smiled at them, all yellowed teeth and beady eyes. "I'm Dalmar, and I will be guiding you through the course." He leered at Kira, who was suddenly reminded of the owner of a certain Ferengi-infested bar.
She shuddered, then snarled at Dalmar, "We'll do fine without a guide, thank you. The maze can't be that hard."
He laughed, a high pitched hyena laugh which gave Kira shivers all over her back. Eww!!! "Who said anything about mazes, dear? And who said anything about a guide through the course? I'm only here to guide you through the rules of the course."
"Then hurry and be done with it," Janeway commanded him.
Dalmar favored her a false grin, and shrugged. "Have it your way. For people in a hurry, it's all very simple then. All you have to do is to get both teammates to the end of the obstacle course together, by hook or by crook! Got that?"
"Yes. And?"
A pregnant pause.
Very pregnant.
"Well, go on…" prodded Kira, rotating her hand in a circle in annoyance. "What else?"
Dalmar shrugged. "That's it!"
"That's it?" asked Kira in disbelief. "Just get them to the end by hook or by crook?" She gave Janeway a quick glance. "Sounds pretty easy to me."
"Ah… but listening and doing her two different things," he said cryptically. "Come with me, I'll give you your equipment."
******
"This is stupid," grumbled Kira, clipping the utility belt they were provided with to her waist. They were in a small wooden enclosure with a intricate bronze door and a ceiling which opened to the dark, tumultuous red skies. "Which kind of idiots put their captain and first officer on the same life-threatening mission?"
They had trekked a least a mile to the decrepit shack where Dalmar had given them the utility belts, then another half-mile to this holding room before the course began. Kira had tried looking over the edge of the hut to see what the course looked like, but Dalmar had assured her that it was useless. The whole course was kept within a sight-baffling shield around its perimeter. The only way to look at it without entering it would be to fly tens of thousands of feet up in the air, a skill that Kira, for all her merits, had yet to master. The arduous trek had shortened her temper considerably, and the grit which had gotten tracked into the inside of her boot was irritating her. Annoyed, she tightened the utility belt.
"We don't have a choice," Janeway reminded her as she mirrored her movements. "Don't worry. I think we'll both get out of this alive."
"You hope," Kira, as the massive doors in front of them swung open.
They took two steps outwards and stood in the middle of a vast open space, illuminated by the reddish light from the crimson sky. Kira stared at the empty court. "What are we supposed to do, precisely?" she asked.
Janeway shrugged. "Walk across."
"It's supposed to be an obstacle course. Where are the obstacles?"
"Speaking of which…" Janeway half-squatted on one knee to gaze across the huge paved tiled of the courtyard. "This does remind me a little of a holoprogram on Voyager. It's an action-adventure genre, based on a twentieth century movie series. It involves walking over a sequence of paved square tiles like this. Only some of the tiles are supported: step on the others and fall to a certain death."
"So you think there is a similar objective here?" Kira asked. "Well, only one way to find out…" And before Janeway could stop her she jumped onto a neighboring tile, eyes closed. When a moment passed and she realized she was still stanidng, she shrugged. "I'm still alive."
"You were lucky," Janeway told her, rapping on the tiles around her. "According to the echoes I'm getting, that was the only other solid tile surrounding the one you were standing on."
Kira blew air between her lips. "Well. Lucky for me."
Janeway gestured. "Lead on, McDuff."
Kira glanced at her with narrowed eyes. "McDuff had better not be some twisted human insult, or I'm going to consign you to living in a pit for the rest of your life." She gestured to the tiles around her.
Janeway laughed as Kira began rapping on the tiles around her. "I wouldn't dream of it."
"This one seems solid. Come on." Kira moved onto the tiles.
"One down, five hundred and sixty-eight to go." Janeway smiled wryly. "We're making good progress: two tiles every ten minutes. At the rate we're going, we'll might actually be finished before dinner the day after tomorrow!"
"Alright, alright, I'll move faster," said Kira, shaking her head with a smile. "Here-"
And suddenly a huge wall of flame roared up behind them. And then started to move towards them.
Janeway's eyes widened. "Much, much faster," she said. "Major, I think we've just been given a time limit."
Kira needed no further bidding. Wasting no time, she tested out the surrounding tiles by stomping on them with her foot and jumping onto those which didn't crumble under her. In that fashion they managed to move across the tiles at a fairly speedy rate.
But the wall of fire was speedier still, and played catch-up.
In desperation Kira turned to Janeway. "Captain, how fast can you jump?"
"I beg your pardon?" asked Janeway. "If you're thinking what I'm thinking…"
"I think I am."
"… you're completely insane."
"No, just desperate." She cocked her head to one side. "You coming, or not?"
Janeway glanced over her shoulder at the inferno closing on her. "I don't have very much choice, do I?" Then she grabbed Kira's hand. "Come on, let's make it fast!"
Hand in hand, the two women jumped across the tiles with wild abandon, screaming like a pair of women trying not to fall into a bunch of pits. Some of the tiles they jumped on crumbled beneath them as they landed on it, but they kept jumping and were on the next tile by then. Kira tripped and yelped as she fell into one of those pits, but she managed to stop herself by grabbing on to the neighboring solid tile. Janeway stopped and turned back to haul her to her feet, and then they were on that wild jaunt again, the wall of fire closing on their backs.
And then they were through. Before them was a mud brick wall with a small bronze door set into it. Laughing at their sheer audacity and luck, the two women went through it just as the firewall reached the mudwall.
